


Autonomy

by Sifl



Series: Split [2]
Category: Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball GT, Dragon Ball Z
Genre: Divorce, F/M, Heartbreak, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Pan is a total champ, Past Relationship(s), Read at Your Own Risk, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Hatred, Self-Loathing, Sinking the Ship, and Pro-Gohan, anti-Gohan/Videl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 13:46:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4879156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sifl/pseuds/Sifl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is <i>Son Gohan</i>, the family man and de facto Man of the House since he was eleven, and sometimes even before. He doesn't know how to put himself first, and he doesn't know how to be alone.</p><p>He does not know how to be <i>Gohan Son.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Autonomy

**Author's Note:**

> This is the mirror piece to Dependence (and yes, the thematically reversed titles were intentional), wherein I basically wrote a story about Videl and Gohan's marriage deteriorating from Videl's side because, well, I could.
> 
> This one deals with the fallout of that story and also why it kind of is a bad plan for Gohan to have been married so early in the first place (or paradoxically, it can be seen as why it is SO necessary for him to have done so from a character standpoint.)
> 
> With enough interest and feedback I'd give this a Real Plot, but it is a... wildly unpopular concept (and runs the risk of creating Videl hate, which I don't really want) so if there is not some serious support, that ain't happenin'.
> 
> Thank you for reading!

Autonomy

Videl had left him the house, half her inherited fortune, the furniture, and full physical custody of their daughter.

Gohan had outright refused the house, balked at the money and furniture, and had asked Videl, in a tiny voice, "Is it because Pan is not human?"

Videl had told him that the money was really his anyway and that he should take it, and that Pan's bedroom furniture would be useful. She had also seen through his question about their daughter. "No. It is because both of you are human."

Gohan wanted to tell her that he could change, that deep inside, he really did have the biology of one of the most wild, resilient, and adaptable creatures in the universe, but knew that trying to win her back by saying so would undermine his point. Divorce was a change. Keeping Videl was homeostasis. Gohan could not see himself succeeding in maintaining the latter by using the former as his argument.

He wanted so badly to reach for his wife's hand as the papers were signed, but she was again Videl Satan the celebrity and he was Son Gohan the scholar and that was impossible.

"You can come see Pan anytime," Gohan tried. "She loves you, and she'll miss you."

Videl shook her head. "I'm not leaving my daughter behind. I am still her mother, and I am going to be that forever. Please don't mistake me leaving you for abandoning her ever again."

\---

Gohan tucked his little girl into bed. She reached out for him and caught his sleeve. "Daddy," Pan said, looking into his face, "Tell me again why we are moving soon?"

Gohan smiled and stroked her hands. "Your mother and I, we thought," he choked on the almost-lie that he nearly told, "We are going to live in two different houses." He hoped that was a sufficient answer.

Pan was smarter than that. "But why?"

But why, indeed. He wondered why he was perpetually made to deal with the ugly things that his loved ones left undone. "She has... important things she needs to do by herself, and you and I will have lots of fun living in the mountains where grandma and grandpa are. Won't you like that?"

Pan nodded, slowly. "I guess."

Gohan kissed her forehead and drew her covers up higher around her.

"Are you and Mommy mad at each other?" Pan was still digging. The awkward silences that had permeated the house for the past month must have caught her attention.

"No, sweetheart," he said, and it felt like a punch in the gut because it was actually the truth.

Videl was not mad at Gohan. She just did not want him anymore.

\---

Gohan bought a capsule house and moved back to Mount Paozu, across from his parents. He indulged his mother and let her homeschool her granddaughter. Gohan pleased his father by asking him to teach Pan, too, but about martial arts. For the Ox King, the whole ordeal was an opportunity to spoil his great-granddaughter with surprise presents more often.

Goten was thrown into orbit since he was no longer the family's resident baby and could not get away with everything anymore, and Gohan regretted their solidarity of displacement. But the youngest Son boy just grinned and said that, hey, they were brothers, and they could share a little of everything just like they did when they were younger. It would be like old times.

Gohan wished he could be as laissez-faire about the changes in his life as everyone else.

Even Pan was thrilled about it all when she was not asking about her mother. Goku and Goten would shrug to her questions and say Videl was probably doing fine, and Chi Chi would turn away. 

Pan's father, meanwhile, scheduled for children's divorce counseling and asked himself why he was not good enough or strong enough to help Pan work through this without a stranger's help. He was her primary guardian and lived with her, but he felt like what he was really doing was breaking her time with him apart into little pieces to give to other people. Not only was Videl no longer his wife, but it sometimes felt like Pan was almost no longer his daughter.

Gohan felt very alone.

\---

After the initial lull from the chaos of rearranging her life, Videl also siphoned away some of their daughter's time and arranged outings with her often. Videl never lingered on the mountain long, and Gohan knew better than to try and say hello while keeping everything else from coming out. He would kiss his daughter goodbye and double-check her little backpack for all of the things she would need, and then retreat into his study.

Sometimes, Gohan would see Videl leaving when he could not help but look out his window. Her hair was longer now, and she walked with more purpose. Sometimes, she would take Pan by the hand and fly through the air with her.

Gohan would catch himself reaching out to feel Videl's energy signature before it faded into the distance. He could not help it.

Goten would usually wander in afterwards with some bogus excuse as to why he was in Gohan's house. Trunks was most often the vehicle for such convenient appearances- the two liked to bring gifts of Capsule Corporation gadgets or compiled studies, or sometimes they asked him to help them with their homework even when Trunks already knew the answers.

Gohan was the adult, the firstborn, and he was supposed to be as invincible as Son Goku. If he broke down and pushed some of his pain on them, he was not sure he could forgive himself.

He eventually started locking his study door, and then the windows when Goten began coming in through those.

Gohan had to replace both twice before the boys gave it up.

\---

Pan's training session with her grandfather that day had gotten messy, and Gohan was bathing her to try and remedy the situation. Getting the berry juice out of her hair and off her skin was particularly difficult, and Gohan suspected that his father's and daughter's spars had turned into an outright food fight at some point. Pan's gi lay totally ruined on the bathroom floor.

 _Of course_ Son Goku would choose to use something that stained as his ammunition. Gohan chuckled to himself as he realized how much like his own mother he sounded.

"Did you have fun with your Grandpa today?" Gohan asked his little girl.

"Yes!" Pan said. "Except when he got all this stuff all over me! But I got him back real good!" She turned and grinned at her father, revealing a tongue and teeth painted purple-black from berry juice.

Gohan quietly remembered seeing his own reflection in a puddle after an especially nasty lesson from Piccolo that had left him with a mouthful of blood. He had been about Pan's age.

Everything was so different. "I'm sure you taught him a thing or two about what happens when he tries to get the jump on you, sweetheart," Gohan said, rubbing at the back of her neck a little harder.

Pan laughed for a little while as she swayed to and fro in the bathtub from Gohan's scrubbing. Then, she enveloped her father with her big, dark eyes. "You and Mommy should come with us to play sometime, maybe when Grandma isn't making Goten stay in so that he can come, too. Grandpa showed me this secret place behind the waterfall. It's so cool!"

"Oh," Gohan said. "Well. Maybe, if you ask Grandpa if it's okay, your mother can go with you two one day and I can come the next time." That was all he could say. Somehow, Goku and Piccolo's careful training had only prepared him for wilderness survival and to-the-death combat, not domestic confrontations. Gohan had neither the desire nor the mental steel for either, and that distaste had cost him the woman he loved.

Instead of shouting or making a scene, Gohan had sat his ex-wife down and tried to talk out their problems when she had expressed her desire to leave. What a stupid thing for him to have done. Nothing had been resolved- all they had accomplished was planting a seed of guilt in Gohan for marrying someone he loved and being happy with his life.

Gohan's mother had felt the same guilt when his father had first made his decision to stay dead. Chi Chi had eventually begun to think that Goku had left- and had been leaving, and had constantly been in the process of entering and exiting her life- because he was unhappy with their marriage, and with her..

Gohan figured he had caused her suffering, in part, and threw himself at the task of stopping it however he could. And in her grief, Chi Chi had inadvertently taught her baby boy to be everything she had wanted Son Goku to be for her.

Being a surrogate husband and a father- and attentive and loving, and gentle and kind- was the first task that Gohan not only excelled at, but that brought him joy. It was so different than being asked to murder monsters. Gohan's efforts made everyone happy, for once- his mother would not be so sad and stressed, and his little brother would ride on his back and hold his hand and give Gohan that huge smile they had both inherited from Goku, and the family would feel almost whole again.

Gohan wanted to please his special people.

Pan frowned. "I don't want to have to always do everything twice. I want us all to go as a family, because she is my Mommy and you are my Daddy. I want us to all have fun together."

Gohan started to tell his daughter that while Videl was her family, she was no longer _his_ family anymore, and being around him like that so soon would not make Videl happy. But he knew that answer would not please Pan. Gohan could not win, and so his efforts never made it past the lump in his throat.

He wanted to please his special people so, _so_ much.

"Daddy?" Pan asked, turning to look at him again when his rhythmic scrubbing stopped.

Gohan reached into the tub and pulled his sopping wet daughter close. He figured his forming tears could hide in her bath water. "I love you," he said to Pan. "I'm so proud of you. And I'll never stop loving you, or being proud of you, and I'll never leave you." He held her tighter and felt his shoulders shake. "I love you so much!"

Pan hugged him and Gohan hated himself for making her have to comfort her broken father the same way he had done for his mother. "Don't cry," she said, and Gohan asked himself how many times Piccolo had instructed the same thing and how many times Gohan had failed to do what was asked of him.

But he could not lock his daughter out the same way he had done to Goten and Trunks. Not his little girl. It would destroy him.

"I love you too, Daddy," Pan said, rubbing his back in a desperate attempt to soothe him. It only made her father cry harder.

Gohan's deepest need was to love and be loved, he realized.

\---

The saddest part of it all, Gohan decided, was that he was capable of falling in love with literally anyone.

The discovery rammed him in the face in tandem with Piccolo's spit as the Namek's concern finally expressed itself as a clipped, choked rant.

"Your training! You should never have neglected it! And marrying so young! Idiot!" Piccolo's eyes were redder and wider than usual, and his hands clenched at his sides rather than resting within crossed arms. The Namek was furious, and he felt helpless.

Gohan knew that his teacher's outburst was a misguided attempt to transform Gohan's grief into something that could be burned into nothingness, something that Piccolo could handle by beating it out of Gohan, like a violent wrath, but this situation was nothing so straightforward as misplaced aggression. Piccolo probably even knew it, but could not stand to watch Gohan exist as a wounded shadow of himself.

Somewhere inside, Gohan appreciated the effort even though Piccolo's words cut him deeper. They were not exactly untrue. But Gohan loved Piccolo, so he forgave him for the damage- after all, Piccolo loved Gohan, too. Piccolo's love was like violence most of the time, anyway. Gohan was used to it.

The Namek had tried to kill Gohan's father once, and succeeded another time. He had also kidnapped his student and sent him spiraling into a lifestyle of terror and warfare. But Gohan still loved him all the same, even now, and had chosen to love him even through the fear and uncertainty of their first days together, and their crushing aftermath. Piccolo's favorite child could not help but love, and unconditionally. Gohan even loved Vegeta, and the man had committed repeated, unapologetic, malicious, and cruel acts of murder and destruction repeatedly throughout the time Gohan had known him.

If Gohan loved those two after everything, then he certainly still loved Videl. He would love her forever. It was not even a question. To learn to love Videl from a distance would be ideal, but he could not begin to understand how to do so when she was always so near, picking up Pan from the house or living her life in a place where her ex-husband could effortlessly sense her familiar energy signal.

She was the Son Goku to Gohan's Chi Chi, he realized. She was never with him, but she was never gone long enough for him to close the wound and let it heal.

A piece of him hoped that Videl really was like Goku- that she did love Gohan, and she would come back. He wished she were as cluelessly selfish as his father, who loved as easily and as freely as he lived and left.

But Gohan was too smart for that.

He could find someone else to love. That in and of itself would be easy, but who could he find to love him back? Who in this galaxy would even want someone like him? He was the disappointingly boring child of a phenomenal, impossible, unbelievable, and dangerous fairy tale.

More damning, he was a single father with emotional baggage and the well-being and happiness of a five-year-old daughter to think about. He did not have the luxury of picking just anyone even if they loved him, if such a person even existed.

Piccolo thrust out a hand and grabbed a fistful of Gohan's hair, like he meant to rip it from his scalp. His arm trembled, and his eyes darted to and fro while his emotions fought with his understanding. Then, Piccolo's grip softened and he brushed his fingers through it and down across Gohan's forehead, like he used to do when his beloved student was a toddler.

"I'm sorry," Piccolo finally said. "I can do nothing for you in this modern world you have chosen to live in. You have outgrown me yet again."

\---

Father and daughter were shopping for groceries in Satan City. Gohan sensed Videl immediately and knew they should have gone to East City instead. He held Pan's hand tighter.

"Mommy's here," his daughter said. "Can we go see her?"

Gohan feigned nonchalance. "Well, she might be busy today, Pan. We did not call ahead to let her know we would be in the area. Besides, we need to get the groceries for Grandma and for you and me and get home before dinner."

Pan pouted, but nodded and went along with her father down the sidewalk.

While they were in the dairy aisle, Gohan felt the disturbance in the town as the energies of the police force and his ex-wife congregated in a nearby area to the west. He paid it no mind until several lives flickered out simultaneously and suddenly, like the way the sound of a gunshots instantaneously disturbed the quiet air.

Gohan regarded his daughter. "Pan," he said.

"Yes, Daddy?" She was a little shaken. Gohan knew he would be explaining death to her soon.

"You know not to talk to strangers, right? And not to take candy from anyone, and if anyone tries to touch you that you should defend yourself, right?"

Pan nodded.

Gohan licked his lips and knelt down to hold her shoulders. "Daddy's going to be right back. I need to go somewhere and help some people. Can you be brave and strong for me and watch the cart? If anything happens, you can come find me by my energy signal. Okay?" Gohan was immensely grateful that Pan was basically immune to gunfire and that she could level the store with a tantrum if she so chose. It did not make him comfortable with leaving his child alone, though.

Still, he could not stand here as people died, and Videl was in danger. Another life force disappeared in the distance. "Okay," Pan said.

"Pick out a treat for you, alright?" Gohan said as he levitated into the air and flew out the sliding doors.

The business offices of a large conglomerate were under a terrorist attack. Gohan briefly remembered reading about a major minority taking issue with the company after it ousted them from their lands. He recalled feeling great sympathy for the people, and that Vegeta had called him a bleeding heart for it when the news about it had played over the television in the Briefs's complex the last time Gohan had taken Pan and Goten over to play. 

But Videl was in the line of fire today, so Gohan's sympathies took a backseat to his actions. He landed and systematically incapacitated the hooded figures firing at the police barricade near the entrance. Gohan considered blowing up the guns, but knew if he ignited the bullets in the cartridge rather than outright vaporize then, they would explode and ricochet through the streets. He left them where they lay and looked up at the skyscraper where his wife was.

A pulse of his own life energy revealed that Videl and several officers on the roof were making their way deeper into the building from the top down. The terrorists were most likely holding the employees hostage, but would probably start killing them soon since they no longer had the building secured. Gohan ignored the bewildered media and policemen behind him and strode through the front door of the building.

His shoes clacked coldly against the tile floor as he stopped the conflict floor-by-floor and made his way to intercept Videl before she and her team made it to the center level of the building. That was where the most energies were clustered together, and Gohan figured that the president of the conglomerate was being held there by the leader of the terrorist organization. Very few threatening energies lingered in the upper floors, but Gohan could tell that Videl was checking every room and evacuating anyone she encountered to the roof for an escape by jet copter, probably. Helicopters had too long of a startup time and were more unwieldy. Either way, it would take Videl's team a while to get down where they wanted to be.

Gohan caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window as he slammed a hooded woman in the back with the butt of her own gun. His expression contrasted sharply with his soft, baby blue sweater and khaki dad pants. Even his black hair was beginning to bristle up from stress.

He used to do this kind of thing regularly as Saiyaman, when he was never married and did not have an adorable baby girl waiting for him to come back and for her mother to be safe. It never had gotten to him then.

But Gohan was angry- he was angry that Videl was in danger, he was angry that Videl had put herself in such obvious danger when she had a daughter who would want to see her safe, and he was angry at himself for immediately coming to rescue Videl when he knew it would only make her furious. The reason she did not train to be stronger when they had been together- and why they had stopped being Saiyaman and Saiyawoman- was because she found the obvious disparity between she and Gohan's natural abilities to be condescending. The whole issue made her want to stop trying, and had acted as a catalyst for why she chose to leave rather than take more time for herself within their marriage. Gohan's sudden appearance here would undermine everything she was trying to prove to herself with this divorce.

But her selfishness meant her life or death, and Gohan could not stay his hand when both his and Pan's own wants were on the line. In a way, it was liberating to do something for himself even if it was hiding beneath his daughter's best interest.

Gohan was not a warrior by nature. He was a protector and a nurturer. A hooded figure leapt at Gohan from the shadows and he crushed the terrorist's face with his palm.

Everything was so twisted.

He quelled his fluctuating energy signature and went to the center floors. The two guards trashed the central hallway when they unloaded their cartridges on Gohan, and he waited until they were done before taking them down with a swift kick and a knife hand respectively.

Gohan forced open the door with ease and finished the next group of guards before they even began to open fire on him. Videl was getting closer, and Gohan needed to speed this up.

He quickly and quietly progressed through the floor and stopped outside of a conference room. It was the only place he had yet to infiltrate. Gohan opened the door and then closed it behind him.

Twelve hooded figures trained their weapons on him, and in the center of the room, a thirteenth held a knife to a bound and gagged little boy. Gohan sighed. It was probably the conglomerate president's grandson. Of course they would use an innocent as leverage to get what they wanted from their oppressor rather than confront it directly.

Gohan seriously began to question if he was even doing this more for Pan's benefit than his own or if his daughter was just a convenient excuse.

Still, he wasted no time and moved as a blur around the room to disarm his opponents, starting with the one armed with the knife. As the thirteen figures hit the ground, Gohan untied the child from his gag and bindings. Trying to burn through them with ki would be faster, but it might hurt the boy.

Videl stepped into the room as Gohan finished freeing the little hostage. She said nothing and stared at her ex-husband, seething, while her men raced into the room and cuffed the unconscious terrorists.

"What are you doing here?" She finally said, her voice rising. "You could have blown the whole operation, Gohan! Just because guns can't hurt you, that doesn't mean you can just waltz in and interfere with professional rescue missions! For all you knew, we could--"

One of the downed terrorists regained consciousness and fired his gun at her before he was detained.

Gohan faded in and out of sight before grabbing Videl and stopping the bullets before they hit their mark.

The little boy gasped as he beheld Gohan's sudden golden glow. Everyone else backed away.

"...Please escort the hostage and the perpetrators out," Videl told her men, pulling out of Gohan's arms. They did as they were told, and left Videl and her ex-husband to stand in silence.

Gohan felt his hair relax as he stared into the enraged, but safe, face of the woman he loved. He reached out to hold her again. She slapped him.

"I don't need you to come save me," she said.

Gohan ducked his head. "I should go. I left... I have to go find Pan," he said.

"You left Pan?!" Videl shrieked. "Just because you wanted to come rush in here and be the big hero, huh? Win back your poor, little ex-wife."

Pride was a sin Gohan could barely understand anymore. He had swallowed his long ago, when Majinn Buu had swallowed him. Still, he knew it was what made Videl's temper rise more than anything else. "And you play with death, and risk leaving her for life when you go and do things like this, that are this big and this risky. Five officers are dead," he said.

That sobered Videl some, but not enough. She expressed her grief through anger, an unfortunate pattern that almost everyone Gohan knew adhered to. "I'm sorry that not all of us like to pretend that we aren't indestructible, battle-bred aliens and are actually dedicated enough to take real risks to protect the things we value instead of playing house," she spat.

Gohan took the verbal blow and stood, unmoving.

Videl turned on her heel and walked away. "That was too harsh. I'm sorry," she said.

Gohan reached for her hand to stop her. He did not know exactly what it was he should say, but he wanted comfort, and he wanted her to stay. Even if she was going to be like this to him, he wanted her to stay.

Videl was too guilty to fight, and Gohan wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair. She knew his secrets, and he loved her. He could not understand why staying together was so out of the question. Gohan untied her dark hair and ran his fingers through it. He kissed the top of her head and breathed in her scent.

"Grow up," Videl said, her voice hoarse, and pushed him away. "Find something else to do with your life than chase after me."

Gohan watched her go, incredulous, as he remembered the girl who had pushed him around, stalked him, blackmailed him, made fun of him, married him, had a child with him, and then divorced him because she decided she had been too hasty in making her decisions. And she had told _him_ to grow up.

He felt tears form in his eyes and the taste of metal in his mouth as he bit into his cheek.

He had been Son Gohan almost all of his life, the dutiful son and the acting Man of the House. It was the only role that he could fulfill, and that fulfilled him. He did not know how to be modern and how to put himself first.

He had no idea how to be Gohan Son, the individual.


End file.
